POPULAR South African actor Joe Mafela of S’gudi S’nice fame has admitted at the weekend that he cheated on his wife with President Jacob Zuma’s second wife Nompumelelo Ntuli but well before she met the South African leader.

As news broke last week that MaNtuli had allegedly cheated on her husband with a bodyguard, the actor owned up to the Sunday Times newspaper that he had had an affair with her years ago.

Mafela said he still had not yet admitted the affair to his wife and was at a loss as to how to handle the embarrassing revelation.

“Where do I start explaining this to my wife and children? I don't want to tear my family apart. The matter is very sensitive. This thing happened years ago before she even met the president. I don't want to be in the president's bad books”, he said in an interview with the newspaper.

Mafela said he could not be blamed for the revelation as the Ntuli family should have come clean to the Zumas during the lobolo negotiations.

“I am not the one who is supposed to tell the president about it, but her family,” he says.

MaNtuli dominated the headlines in South Africa last week with talk of her having had an affair with and possibly been impregnated by one of her bodyguards.

The first lady, who is allegedly pregnant, was said to have been caught in bed with her bodyguard Phinda Thomo of Dobsonville last December.

Thomo is said to have confessed the affair to his friends before allegedly committing suicide.

The revelations were made in an unsigned and widely circulated letter supposedly written by Zuma family members who said they were “concerned” with he first lady’s alleged cuckolding.

Zuma’s family has however, denied being behind the letter which was first published by a Durban newspaper.

The letter claimed that “MaNtuli is nothing but trouble in our father’s life and bad for the image of the country.”

It also states that she met Zuma at the Hilton Hotel, where she worked as a cleaner.

The South African leader was said to have been a frequent visitor at the Durban hotel.

Meanwhile, Zuma’s nephew, Khulubuse Zuma, dismissed media claims that the President had called an urgent family meeting at Nkandla today.

He says: “There is no meeting because there is no crisis.”

Zuma was on a state visit to India with MaNtuli when the story broke.

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His son Edward also claimed the family had nothing to do with the letter.

“We don’t know anything about that letter. That is all we are prepared to say for now,” Edward said

President Zuma’s official spokesperson Vincent Magwenya refused to comment on the matter.